Rangers-Caps will go at least six games

New York Rangers coach John Tortorella looks a little pained during his team’s Game 4 loss.Mitchell Layton, NHLI via Getty Images

So, the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals will go at least six games in their Eastern Conference semifinal, the Caps squeaking by the Blueshirts 3-2 Saturday afternoon to even their series at two games apiece. Game 5 is back in New York on Monday night.

Ridiculously, the early matinée was the only NHL playoff action on the Saturday slate.

177 Comments

…I can’t express adequately the optimism I feel with the Bergevin decision as Our new GM …He is a Montrealaise ‘coming Home’ …and, He is saying all the right things, so far

…but, I also see people here talking Hartley, Quenneville, Crawford, Vigneault, for Coach

…the sole ‘raison’ many of Us, speaking, at least, for Myself, are Montreal Canadiens’ Fans are Our memories of the Glory Years …for example, it was Bob Gainey, love Him or hate Him, that brought Myself back from the verge of indifference to My Habs’ Fandom

…so many years preoccupied living in other parts of the World and Canada, plus almost 20 years of Habs’ suckitude will do that to a once passionate Habs’ Fan

…Gainey, and then Carbo, were My wake-up calls that re-energized My Fandom …notwithstanding Their end-results

…through the years, I had seen Gainey, Lemaire and Lapointe go off to Minnesota/Dallas, Fergie to the Jets as a Manager, Big Bird to the Kings/Devils, Riseborough to the Flames, Lafleur to the hated Nordiques and hapless Rangers, …even earlier, I had painfully watched Doug Harvey traded to the Rangers, …and most painfully of all, My ultimate boyhood Hero Jacques Plante to the Gawdforesaken Weeds and other teams

…I had been a blind addicted Fan of the Montreal Canadiens since I can remember having memory …because, no doubt, I was born a Montrealer …and the unmatched joy the Team provided My identity by being ‘a winner’ in style as well as substance during the first 30 plus years of My Life

…but it was when the ‘winning’ became much less frequent and then inexistent, that I began asking Myself what was really at ‘the core’ of My Fandom ? …was it ‘the Team’ …or, it’s Players ?

…Which/Whom did I Love more ? …Which/Whom, inflamed My passion more, as a Fan ?

…difficult question to answer, I found …but I finally came to the conclusion I would have never had had the obsession with this Team if it had not the wonderfully unique Players it had had through those Glory Years

…ok, I realize there are so-called Habs’ Fans out there that sees it differently than I, …Crawford or Quenneville could walk in here and You will not miss a beat

…call Me crazy if You may, but I would rather ‘lose’ with a bench of Roy, Carbo and Big Bird …than ‘win’ with a Crawford, Quenneville or whomever

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HIS’ Official Habs’ Fan Theme Song; Morrissey ‘There is a light that never goes out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjObvIQtsLk&feature=related
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What I WANT ! is an aircraft carrier at centre and nuclear destroyers on each wing going to the net like bats out of Hell !, …NO MORE rubber duckies !!!
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Habitant means PASSIONATE HOCKEYhttp://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=423049

Larry Brooks, New York Post: ” No matter where you sit in the spectrum of sports in New York and New Jersey, there never before was anyone like Mariano Rivera and there never will be.

Same holds true for Martin Brodeur, who celebrates his 40th birthday today with a Game 4 assignment in nets against the Flyers, and who walked through our door to stay two years before The Great Rivera.

No goaltender in the NHL plays remotely the way Brodeur does, none ever will again, and no goaltender in the world comes close to having as much fun plying his trade.

Way back when, it was Brodeur against Ron Hextall in the playoffs. Now, Brodeur against Ilya Bryzgalov (or Sergei Bobrovsky). Always, Brodeur for the Devils.

And because we were reminded a few days ago that we never know how or when it’s going to end, this is the time to acknowledge the magnificent fortune we have had in these parts to have been able to watch The Great Brodeur for 18 seasons. ”

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HIS’ Official Habs’ Fan Theme Song; Morrissey ‘There is a light that never goes out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjObvIQtsLk&feature=related
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What I WANT ! is an aircraft carrier at centre and nuclear destroyers on each wing going to the net like bats out of Hell !, …NO MORE rubber duckies !!!
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Habitant means PASSIONATE HOCKEYhttp://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=423049

Haha yeah they played possum all year just to psych out teams once they got to the playoffs! All kidding aside the Kings have some serious talent on their roster. Quick has shown that he is maybe the best goalie in the league, easily top 3, Kopitar Carter and Richards are all forwards capable of scoring 30+ goals and 70-80 points even though Richards and Carter had off years, Dustin Brown has some serious grit and skill and Drew Doughty is an all star dman. I think they seriously underachieved this year and have really turned it on in the playoffs.

He made a mistake in his article too. He stated that the Canadiens bypassed Mike Bossy twice, but that is false. The Canadiens had two first rounders, and could have grabbed Mike Bossy with the pick they used on Mark Napier, but he was gone by the time they used their second first-rounder on Normand Dupont.

In the second round, they did pick up Rod Langway, which was a big plus, and therefore not a catastrophic draft. Until they traded him away for a hill of beans, which was catastrophic, except there was still so much talent on the team that people still think Rick Green was a good defenceman.

Marc Crawford- his first two stops he had success, but his two most recent (LA and DAL) were less than stellar. I’m not convinced he’s the guy.

Patrick Roy- his track record speaks for itself, but we have no idea how that will translate as a coach at the NHL level. Ego issues aside, my gut tells me that now is not the time for us to hire Roy as the bench boss.

Denis Savard- still employed by Chicago, but Bergevin could convince him to come “home” to Montreal. He could become the local-boy-makes-good story without risking tarnishing his legacy as a Habs player (as we all know he was past his prime by the time he became a Hab, and if he has success as our coach, maybe the Wickenheiser grumblers can finally be silenced).

Gerard Gallant- head coach of the Saint John Sea Dogs, a team looking to become the first team in history to repeat as Memorial Cup champs after the previous champs had repeated themselves- Windsor (how often does this happen in sports? I don’t think that has happened in baseball or football since the ’70s, hockey since the Oilers in the ’80s, and basketball probably the Bulls after the Rockets or Pistons). Not sure how Gallant’s French is, but he’s obviously familiar with Nathan Beaulieu, and can clearly get the most out of talented youngsters.

Benoit Groulx- still coaching in the Q with Gatineau last time I checked, but I always thought he had NHL potential.

Craig Ramsay- I thought he did a great job in his one year in Atlanta before getting shafted by the Winnipeg ownership group. Maybe he’s better as an assistant coach, and I have no idea what his French is like, but he could be an intriguing candidate.

Other names that you’d like to see in the mix? Sutter? Hartley (his Swiss club doesn’t plan to let him leave his contract)? MacTavish? Anyone else?

So with the caps knocking out the bruins and giving the rangers everything they can handle,also with the kings disposing of the nucks and looks like they are going to do the same to the blues. It really does look like all you need to do is make the playoffs and anything can happen.

Don’t tell that to the tank crowd. All you have to do is stink it up for 3 or 4 years then you can enter the Playoffs as a #1 or 2 seed and win the cup. Anything else is failure, failure I tells ya!!!! You might as well not even bother to play the regular season if you are not going to win the Cup.

The Kings and Caps showed glimmers of hope during the Regular season. The Habs didn’t.

There is as much difference between a 15th place club and an 8th place club as their is between 8th and 1st.

If this was the 2010 or 2011 team, then yes we could pull upsets (did in 2010, one goal away in 2011)… but this years club was a mess and it started with the dysfunctional management early in the season (firing Pearn hours before a game).

I agree with the point of view that it will hurt the organization to keep throwing away picks (esp. 2nd round picks) to pick up players that will play for the Habs for maybe 3 months, just long enough for them to get into the playoffs and then get eliminated. Same goes for losing players for nothing.

That being said, the idea that the Habs should obviously be striving to win the Cup, and anything else is considered failure and unacceptable unlike the glorious days of old simply doesn’t work anymore in this league. We can all hope and expect that management does things “right” (at minimum: not giving away too much for too little, not crippling the team with bad contracts, etc.), and builds a Cup contender, but in the meantime, it seems as if some posters will remain bitterly disappointed until the Habs win the Cup and can’t enjoy the games until then, dismissing them as meaningless.

I agree Biter,if we could do that I would go for it.Drafting can be a real crapshoot. A bird in the hand and all that.We also have 2 second rounders this year and Three second rounders next year and there is a lot of gems in the second round.

The solution to the big contract issue whether you are Montreal with Gomez, or Edmonton with Souray (past tense), or other current albatrosses, is this:
Allow teams to trade the player, eating part of the player’s salary against cap, and allowing the receiving team to proceed with player (maybe even, turning it over again).

You think Price will sign a 10 year contract – or a contract that will last until he’s 43? My, you’ve got the jump on everyone including the new Habs GM!

Seriously, of course that would be a bad thing, but I believe you’ve been cautioning against this for many months to the point where it can be interpreted as you’d rather not have Price on the team if they had to “overpay” slightly in whatever form that may be.

Jesus! Are you serious? The non guaranteed NFL contracts are a shameful abomination. I really wonder why fans who hate these greedy millionaire athletes love the greedy billionaire owners.

Oh course the NHLPA would never agree to it, the non-guaranteed contract is vile. It is not like all these players are free agents able to ply their trade with any team. From the draft on, they are largely indentured servants.

The simplest way to avoid the issue is to term limit contracts to no more than 5 or 6 years. The NHL could also implement a soft cap or a luxury tax where a rich team could blow through the cap by paying a penalty into a fund to be distributed to cap observant teams. You could adjust it to attenuate undesirable behaviour.

Agreed that NFL contracts are a sham. They’re one way, in that they bind the player to the team, and if he outplays it he’s stuck with it, with only a holdout as a bargaining tool. If he underperforms, he gets cut and doesn’t receive his money. The NFL can even cut players who are injured and subsequently fail their medical. This is ridiculous.

I pay big money to see players play, they should get the money, not the owners.

The Canadiens need more than just a GM and an assistant. We can use a few helpers. We need a brain trust, a lot of talented hockey people. Some experienced guys, and some young guys learning the trade, guys like Vincent Damphousse.

The old days of Sam Pollock and Prof. Caron running everything are over. The league is complex, there’s more info to process, the competition is stronger. Plus, there’s no salary cap on the management team, let’s outspend other teams there.

I’ve repeated the story that Ryan McDonagh told about the trade. He said it was a surprise, but that in a way, it wasn’t since he hadn’t heard very much from the Canadiens in the previous year. He was getting ready to attend the development camp and was looking forward to it, since he was eager to talk to someone in the organization.

To this story, I say “Never again”. Let’s have lots of managers, player development staff, coaches, strength and conditioning, etc. Let’s make sure we have someone in touch with each of our prospects, regularly. Let’s ensure that nothing drops through the cracks.

If Dudley has an ‘out’ , then Burkie can’t really do much about it except do what he does best: whine and moan to the media. The guy’s worried about the optics of losing Dudley, understandable since he’s probably close to losing his job

Burkie was boasting early last season that one of the reasons he has so many assitant GM’s was so they could move to other organizations thereby giving him “friends” in those organizations with whom he could deal favourably.

He will be rejoicing if one of his guys gets an offer.
He probably can’t do any more deals with Anaheim where he did most of his transactions since he came to Toronto.

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“It’s just an opinion – I could be wrong”

Carbo and Roy are good pals. He wanted Patrick as his assistant before he asked Muller to be. He also has the best record for a Habs coach in a long time. No matter how he is portrayed, he was not the second coming of the plague.

Beyond that, it would be Patrick’s clubhouse, and Larry would be around to mediate and keep everything on an even keel.

I’ve been advocating Patrick Roy with Guy Carbonneau and Larry Robinson as assistants for a while now. I want former Habs who lived and died for the team, and who can instill this passion into the new players. I wasn’t happy with our transplanted Senators staff, it didn’t make sense that we don’t capitalize on our history and tradition.

– In a medium bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon; stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in oats, raisins and chocolate chips. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. Roll the dough into walnut sized balls, and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheets. Flatten each cookie with a large fork dipped in sugar.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

All right, because you vouch for it I’ll try it, but usually I don’t go for the oatmeal chocolate chip compromise. If I want an oatmeal cookie I make one. Same for chocolate chip. These attempts to health up cookies, or make healthy cookies palatable usually are bound for failure.

Dudley’s biggest contribution may well be in our pro scouting department and evaluating players to trade for. Look for players like ANDREW LADD to join the Habs during his tenure here………I think he also brought Marty St.Louis to Tampa ( I could be wrong here ).

Since there seems to be some disagreement about our # 3 pick (prehaps an under achieving Russian or a Swede) why not package the #3 pick and Gomez(they gotta take him) for a big strong top 4 D-man OR a big strong top 6 forward who both (can score) and are under contract for at least 3- 4 more years. We would know what we’re getting and dumping Gomers contract as well. Remember with any draft choices from1 -300 nothing is guaranted.

Top 4 Means #1-4 D-man and Top 6 means a 1-6 forward & dumping Gomez contract and having the money to spend on another top forward or D-man during free agency. 2 for 1 makes sense and again no guarantee that our pick will be the 2nd coming of Lafleur or even play in the NHL for the next 2 years.

Sure our guy may not play in the NHL next year, but the best teams build via the draft. Not pull Burke moves and give away guys like Seguin and Hamilton for a bag of magic beans.

This team has too many 2nd liners and not enough first liners as it is. There are no guarantees, but how many 3rd overall picks since the lockout are busts? Not many… I’d rather roll the dice and keep the pick.

If you need cap space, just stick Gomez in Hamilton and boom you have the money to sign someone too.

The oilers have had the 1st round pick now for the 3 rd straight year now and finished last the last 3 years. You need a combination of both draft and FA’s. We get 1 top line player for the draft pick and with gomers money we get another top line player.

I don’t blame Burke for being concerned about letting Dudley go at this point. I’m sure Habs fans would be upset if it was the other way around. The Habs have done a good job with amateur scouting in the past, so they are probably fine for the draft. It’s pro scouting and player development that needs more help, so as long as Dudley is on board prior to free agency, I think that is a reasonable compromise.

On the other hand, if there is no rule against it, Burke may have to suck it up. It will be interesting to see what the league will do.

Burke won’t compromise any of the Leafs acquisitions by giving the go-ahead for Dudley to sign with the Habs as assistant GM this postseason. Good luck with Bergevin convincing Burke that he needs Dudley immediately cuz’ I don’t think this will be easy.

Ahh…Saturday night. 7:20 (I’m early)
Guinness? … Check
Elusive TV remote? … Check
Nacho Chips? ….. Check
Salsa? …. Check
No one in my recliner…. Ah, here we go.
CBC on …. What? I guess the Caps-Rangers are on TSN tonight. Huh. Odd.
TSN…poker? Whaaaa?
Where the hell is the game?
I guess I’d better check HIO for an update:
What? The game is over? What the hell?????
A game at noon? on a Saturday? This is Buttman’s doing, isn’t it?
Ahrgg… So Saturday night, and no hockey and no one to get drunk with.
What a buzz-buster.
Who in their right minds, trying to attract TV ratings, puts an important playoff game on a Saturday afternoon. The new NHL.
Give me Danny Gallivan and Dick Irvin on a Saturday night anytime.

The NHL and Gary Bettman treat Canada as a saturated market. There is nothing to gain by trying to sell the game in Canada, everyone is already watching, all the tickets are already sold. The gains to be made are going to come from the struggling markets in the Sun Belt, so they will pitch the game to them instead of us.

Look how long it took to switch a team back to Canada, and the way Mr. Bettman added like the Grinch, threatening Winnipeg fans that they better buy all the tickets or else, with a grimace for seasoning.

Even TSN and Hockey Night in Canada don’t gain anything by having another game to broadcast that won’t really increase their ratings. Winnipeg fans were already watching other teams, they were already watching the commercials.

So we may need to get ready for this, to expect that the NHL will be on all fours begging favour from NBC, and that the Canadian markets will be expected to adapt.

This news is about 3 weeks old, but I just read it. Perhaps it has been posted and discussed here already. Hockey Prospect has undated their 2012 draft rankings. They now rank Galchenyuk as #1. I don’t know if the majority of scouts are still ranking Yakupov as #1. I was really hoping that we could draft Galchenyuk with our number 3 pick. He seems to have the qualities we could most use.

Well, the good news is that we will get a great prospect with that #3 pick, no matter who is picked #1 and #2. But I hope Galchenyuk is still available.

I find it unbelievable that some of the people here would rather have Pierre McGuire than Bergevin as our general manager. McGuire would have drafted Gilbert Brule instead of Price and constantly talked about torontos D from a few years ago to be the next big 3. Pierre is an analyst that hasn’t been with a hockey club with any position of authority this millennia. Bergevin not only brings 20 years of NHL experience along with being part of the 2010 cup winning Chicago Blackhawks for the past 7 years but he started out from the bottom like every one else and worked his way to assistant general manager. He’s worked under Dale Tallon who recently brought the Florida Panthers to the playoffs after they were near last in the conference the year before and has earned nothing but praise around the league. If McGuire was serious about being a gm he would’ve worked his way up an organization just like everyone else. Bergevin might not be the perfect general manager but seems a heckuva better one than McGuire.

The obvious difference in Albert Pujols is his size. I don’t watch baseball ever since the Expos left Montréal, so I’m no expert, but this gives me a perspective that baseball fans may not have, in that they may have seen him shrink gradually and not noticed. To me, to see the way he looks now compared to when he was unavoidable on SportsCentre, and when I didn’t have a PVR and couldn’t skip over baseball and basketball, is qualitatively different. His arms, his shoulders and traps and backs, he used to look like a block of granite. Now he’s a lean, slim guy. Even his face, he used to have a comic book superhero face, with muscles in his neck and jaw that were prominent. No longer, I hardly recognized a picture of him in the dugout in his Angels uni.

During the steroid scandal five years ago or so, there were people holding him as an example of a player who was naturally, cleanly huge and powerful, and doubters were shouted down. He was one of the good guys. He never had a ‘growth spurt’ like Barry Bonds. Yet the evidence seems to be in. Mr. Pujols seems as shrunken as Mr. Bonds does now. The coincidence that MLB has started to test for HGH is a detail that is hard to overlook.

It’s now impossible to ignore the possibility that a ball player is juiced, same as track stars, Olympic weightlifters, MMA fighters. Unfortunately, the sane reasonable man now has to assume that all athletes who play in sports where strength, speed and power are crucial are guilty of using performance enhancing drugs until proven innocent.

I just hope the Kings beat the Blues later (Game 4) so we don’t have to see Hicthcock’s system of hockey. Boy, I can tell Elliott is not having a good time in the net since Halak is injured at this point.

Whatever happens between the Philly vs NJ series, I hope that whoever wins won’t advance to the finals. Washington is my favorite in the East and Phoenix or LA should be the ones to advance in the West.

Please allow me this post of personal privilege. Today is my son’s, chrisadiens birthday. He still sits next to me at sporting events we attend together. He thinks I’m doing him a favor in taking him to games. It is him who is doing me the favor.
This hockey team has furthered the bond between father and son. Thru the years as we battled issues caused by “generation gap” the thing that was always constant was the love of this City, the people in it, and the hockey team. For me its always more then a team.
Happy Birthday Chris!

Funny story Gerald. Had a big fight with his Mother over naming rights. My choices were Daniel Joseph, after Rusty Staub and Guy Damien, after You know who. As usual I lost the fight thus Chris became known as Chris. 🙂

Great stuff Jim!
Happy Birthday to Chris!
As Dennis Thatcher said to his wife Margaret, who’d scolded him for ordering a gin & tonic on an early flight: “My dear, it’s NEVER too early for a gin & tonic.” Of course, subtract g&t for beer… you get my drift.

Great to see the Habs bringing families together. My Dad and I used to watch games all the time together, and he took me to my first ones at the Forum.

Pretty crazy, one game on a Saturday, and an early matinee to boot. Does HNIC have any drag whatsoever? Or is it all set up for the Yanks and their NBC schedule? We here in hockey land watch faithfully on Saturday nites and now when the games matter most we get screwed. And it’s only beginning. Count on very few, if any, Saturday nite games from here on in. NBC rules and it sucks!!!!

So while I am happy we have two games to watch today, I fail to understand the schedule makers. Having St. Louis/L.A. play at 3pm EST, this means they are playing noon local. While NewJersey/Philly will have a traditional evening start.

I realize they are looking to give St. Louis/L.A. some American Hockey Primetime (which evidently is afternoon), but the quality of game is usually not as strong with these early starts. Rather flip flop and let the Eastern teams start at 3pm their own time and let the Western series start late afternoon.

“Sending away the rights to Ryan McDonagh because someone in the Canadiens system didn’t think the defenseman would add enough to the offense has a place in the chapter about Montreal passing (twice) on Mike Bossy in the draft because a scout didn’t like the way he back-checked.”

Well the journalist did tried to make a point by showing some measure of validity that the Habs don’t have an eye for talent (I can see many grammar mistakes as well, haha!). For me, they can write everything they wish to ridicule. However, when next season starts and all the pieces are in place along with the 3 albatross contracts out, these ppl. won’t be writing any more garbage against the Habs.

According to HockeyDB, Montreal (Mark Napier) only passed on Bossy once, but the Rangers (Lucien DeBlois and Ron Duguay) passed on him twice. I know fans and media enjoy rubbing our noses in the Habs mistakes, but making things up seems a little over the top.

Beat me to it Mark. Brooks is a hack. FWIW, the Leafs also passed on him twice. We got a few decent seasons out of Mark Napier anyway, and subsequently some good years from big Bobby Smith whom he was traded for.

a few decent seasons? One of 35 goals and two of 40 goals, more than decent I would say. not much power play time either. Not Bossy like numbers but he wasn’t playing on nearly as good a team as Bossy either. Those Habs of the early 80s were a powerhouse in the regular season but went out with barely a whimper during Napier’s 3 best seasons. The team was rotting from the top down then, under Grundman, as it was under Gainey/Gauthier more recently. And, yes, Bobby Smith proved to be a wise trade by Savard, one of his first moves, as he provided a missing piece for playoff success.